Biblical Meditation Overview: The Four Ingredients

I enjoy baking four-ingredient artisan bread that uses water, flour, yeast, and salt. The recipe I use is simple, and I have come to savor the results—a wonderful aroma, an attractive crusty appearance, and an inviting chewy texture. My mother was a bread baker, and the appeal of the smell and texture of freshly baked bread was seemingly imprinted on me early on. In the New York Times, I read how easily one could bake bread with four ingredients without kneading. I wanted to try it, and now I am hooked. I hope this explanation of meditation gives you a sense that meditation is simple, like baking simple bread. It is not some complex gourmet spiritual practice for elites.

I mentioned my four-ingredient bread. Biblical meditation has four elements (easily remembered using the acronym PROD). These are not steps but ingredients (like flour and water in bread) that you should use in your meditation recipe.

Present: We meditate in the presence of God. Our risen Lord promised always to be present with his disciples: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20 NLT). Paul tells us we are spiritually united with Jesus: Christ is in us (2 Cor. 13:5), and we are in him (1 Cor. 1:30). In meditating, we interact with our risen Lord Jesus and are strengthened, challenged, comforted, and guided by him. The fact that we are fellowshipping with Christ is a distinctive aspect of biblical meditation.

Read: We engage in a slow, repetitive oral reading of Scripture. The Hebrew words translated as “meditate” in the Bible have root meanings of “sing, coo, growl, mutter, or hum.” Make it physical: read aloud, mutter, make up a song or write the passage down, engage your body in the reading process, and read very slowly.

Open-hearted: There are great promises made to those who meditate: “You [will] prosper and succeed in all you do” (Josh. 1:8 NLT; see also Ps. 1:3). The positive change that flows from meditation comes from God working in and with us. Meditation is always a cooperative venture. We are in a listening partnership with God as we sit with his Word. This is not an activity you will master by sheer willpower and perseverance; it is a way of opening yourself to Christ through his Word and truth. Enter into meditation with the attentive posture you’d bring to any important conversation.

Delight: Meditation grows out of an attraction to and respect for the Word of God. We meditate on what we care about. A delight in the Bible comes as a gift from God that we should seek in prayer. Delight also develops as we read with a sense of marvel and attentiveness to the literary beauty of the Bible. Since meditation is delight-driven pondering, we should start meditating on the Scriptures we already find attractive. The Shepherd Psalm (Ps. 23), the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13), or God’s declaration of love (John 3:16) are favorites of many. It’s best to start with what we delight in already.